All,
The ARISS team does not plan to use the 144.49 downlink for SSTV for the
long term.
The ARISS team fully understands the Region 1 band allocations and wishes
to abide by them. It should be noted that amateur satellite communications
are allowed by ITU rules in the 144-146 segment. The reason that we have
different uplinks in different regions is that the three ITU regions do not
have consistent frequency allocations per mode. As an international team,
ARISS and many ham radio entities worked hard to clear as many systems
(repeaters, APRS, etc) from the lower edge of the AMSAT Satellite band
segment (145.80-146) as possible. This enabled ARISS to have a dedicated
downlink on 2 meters 145.80.
Our Russian team members were running some initial tests on SSTV last
weekend. They utilized 144.49 for these initial tests because they wanted
to do a full checkout of the SSTV downlink and there are still a few
repeaters on 145.80 in Russia. These tests were successful. We appreciate
the amateur community's patience on this while our Russian colleagues
were running these tests. Based on these initial tests, the ARISS
international team has been working on some procedures for long-term use of
SSTV. This includes the use of SSTV on the 145.80 international
downlink. As we get closer to final checkout of the system, you will see
these changes made.
Thanks for all your interest in ARISS. We are looking forward to some
exciting times as SSTV images once again beam down from space!!
73, Frank Bauer, KA3HDO
ARISS International Chairman
-------------------------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 16:07:55 +0100
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?F=E9lim_Doyle_M3HIM?=
<Felim.M3HIM(a)ntlworld.com>Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] ISS SSTV
The 144.490MHz frequency being used on the ISS for the SSTV downlink is not
a valid satellite or SSTV frequency in Region 1 as it is just at the top of
the CW Beacon segment of the 2m band. So, if the ISS crew are on the ball,
they should not have SSTV on when passing over the UK. However, they did
have it on during one or more passes at the weekend when I was in the GB4FUN
bus at the AMSAT-UK Colloquium. We failed to capture a picture despite
having a crystal clear signal and correctly decoding the CW identification.
It was possibly because the software was not set up for the correct mode
(i.e. not Robot 36).
There may be other opportunities over the coming days/weeks but, as I say,
strictly speaking it should not be running over Region 1.
73 de
Félim M3HIM
IO91ot
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK
